Premier Alison Redford will meet today with global financial and political leaders in an elite and secretive gathering Alberta premiers have only rarely been asked to join.

Redford’s invitation to this year’s Bilderberg meeting in Chantilly, Va., signals energy issues will figure prominently in the private but informal discussions among politicians and royalty, academics and presidential advisers, billionaires and bank chairmen from both sides of the Atlantic, says a British management professor who has interviewed past Bilderberg forum attendees.

“You could absolutely bet your bottom dollar on it,” said Andrew Kakabadse, a Cranfield University School of Management professor who co-wrote Bilderberg People: Elite Power and Consensus in World Affairs.